Chapter One
Vi’s estate was nestled against the coastline a few miles through The Tear, its architecture reminiscent of an old Roman villa. As far as Nick was concerned, it held the same appeal as a college rager; that is to say, none at all. Courtyard braziers lit the tightly packed guests in warm, dancing light that bounced off feathers, scales, and fur. Nick’s family was on the other side of the mob. He rocked back on his heels, committed, and advanced.
He immediately bumped into a couple. A woman in a floor-length dress of muddy green stopped in her tracks and fixed a quelling look on Nick. Her eyes were black—the whites, the iris, the pupil. An odd shiver raced down his spine, and Nick rocked back on his heels once more, only just catching himself before retreating a step. His stepbrother, Connor, dated a bratty merman with dark-blue eyes, no whites in sight, but Adonis’s fiery nature was contained in those eyes. The ones Nick stared into now were cold.
“Watch your step,” she warned, a thread of genuine anger in her voice. In his peripheral vision, Nick saw the young man at her side tense and subtly lean away from her.
The symbol his little brother, Laurence, had drawn onto his inner wrist itched. The supposed ‘learning’ spell he’d been bullied into the moment he’d stepped off Connor’s yacht hoursago. He resisted the urge to rub the mark, not wanting to smudge Laurence’s work.
“You walked into me,” Nick replied in her language. Whatever that was. He tried not to think too hard about how a scribble on his arm had jammed a foreign language into his brain. A symbol thatLaurencehad drawn. God, he’d never convince Laurence to stay in their own world.
Her partner peered at Nick’s arm with curious blue eyes, studying the symbols taking up real estate from wrist to forearm. Nick had given Laurence permission to do one—the language-learning spell—and then sat still, a prisoner, as Laurence proceeded to draw dozens. Nick’s arms looked as though someone had scribbled all over him in an ancient script.
A black tail slashed through the air. The young man’s extra limb was long and lean, thick as Nick’s wrist at the base, and then thin and whip-like by the end. The tufts at the tip looked like arrow fletching, soft and feathered. The woman’s black eyes flashed at him. Her closed fan broke against the young man’s gloved hand with a softcrack.“Be dignified,” she warned.
The curiosity in the young man’s eyes faded. His tail curved inwards, pressing innocuously against his own leg where it blended with his dark trousers. His hands remained slack at his sides, in range of another strike. It was only there that Nick detected the subtlest of trembles.
Immediate loathing warmed Nick’s gut.
“Is there anything less dignified than smacking your partner?” Nick challenged. He might have no grasp of ‘normal’ here, but some things still just pissed him off.
The woman whirled on him, and Nick met her soot-black glare with a challenging one of his own. Her partner pinched the sleeve of her dress, seemingly taking great care not to actually touch her.
“You are a student?” the man asked Nick. His gaze moved once more to the symbols decorating Nick’s arms. “An apprentice of Vi’s?” he added.
Nick was a student at an Irish university, technically studying business and accounting, but in reality investing most of his time in the gardening club, begging coffee plants to sprout in the Irish climate. He was only in this world because Laurence wanted to go to a party. A party full of men with tails, women with possessed eyes, and a cacophony of voices that Nick couldn’t understand.
“No,” Nick said, realising the man was still waiting for his answer.
The woman’s eyes moved to the symbols on Nick’s arms. Her expression froze over, just for a moment, then smoothed into a smile. “The witch is skilled, is she not? These look well done. Very neat and precise.”
The symbol got hot as the wordwitchcrossed her lips.
Nick frowned at her. That smile did nothing to ease the coldness behind her eyes, and he had no interest in talking to her. He hesitated, sparing a look for the struck partner, but he didn’t imagine that asking them to separate to check beneath the glove would go over well. With a feeling of irksome ineptitude, he stepped away.
“Excuse me.” Nick dodged around them. He took more care passing through the crowd, not an easy task with his broad shoulders, and swivelled his head to take stock of his family. Laurence was on the dance floor with his partner, the pretty, long-tailed Jasper, who was patiently teaching Laurence a dance that had similar steps to an Irish jive. A live band on a raised stage played a lively tune. His dad, Trevor, stood to the side of the dance floor, watching over Laurence with a faint smile. Connor stood next to him, head bent towards Trevor as he spoke.
Nick joined them. “This spell thing is itching.”
Connor startled, head snapping towards him. He scowled at Nick, who instinctively returned it. “What?”
“You’re such a sneak,” Connor said in the same tone he used when Adonis splashed water on the pages of a book he was reading.
“What?” Nick repeated, aghast. He was one protein shake away from being a bulldozer going through the crowd. He shoved his hair from his face, the long strands clinging to his balmy skin.
His family looked like they’d stepped out of another world, each wearing leather pants and boots, with finely embroidered waistcoats over pristine white shirts.
Trevor examined Nick’s arm, but Connor’s cool grey eyes slid over Nick’s clothes instead. He lost his scowl, expression flattening out. “Is that what they gave you to wear?” Connor asked. Trevor’s attention leapt to Connor. Nick took that as a cue that, though he couldn’t pick it up in Connor’s voice, Trevor heard an unhappy note.
Nick looked down at himself. “No. I didn’t like what they left out.” Which was a different coloured version of what Trevor had on now. Something so fine felt out of place on Nick, and he’d stood over the clothes laid out on the bed for a long time before marching to the door to find someone to demand if this was a joke. The exact moment Nick opened the door, one of Vi’s students happened to be walking by, and he happened to be Nick’s size.
That was probably why that woman had given him such a frigid look. Nick looked more like the helpers racing around than a guest in an off-white canvas shirt, cotton pants and boots that stopped at his ankles. There wasn’t a single bit of embroidery on him, whereas every other party guest was a walking advertisement for their tailors. Nick didn’t mind the finery onother people. Connor gleamed like a silver jewel, Trevor an azure gem, and Laurence a shining emerald.
Connor huffed out a soft breath. “That’s fine then.”
“We should ask Vi about the symbol.” Trevor scanned the guests.
Connor and Laurence’s friend Sam had invited them all to celebrate his mer-boyfriend’s annual grape harvest, and the faint smell of spiced wine permeated the air, reminding Nick of the Christmas fair back home. He usually prepared for the cold night with hand warmers, which inevitably ended up in Laurence’s pockets while Nick instead clutched too-sweet mulled wine he hated the taste of just to keep warm. Last winter, he’d over-prepared with six packets to crack on the night, aware of Connor joining them and possibly needing one too. Connor had folded an arm around Laurence at the first shiver. Nick’s hand warmers proved redundant and useless.
